Latino women appear to have a greater risk of developing breast cancer from eating processed meat, such as bacon and sausages, than white women, a new study found roughly a few months after the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that processed meat can increase risk of colorectal cancer.
The researchers with senior author Mariana Stern, who was a part of the international panel with the WHO that classified processed meat as a carcinogen, were curious to see how factors like race, genetics and ethnicity can affect cancer risk.
"Our focus was to understand if meat consumption is associated with breast cancer and whether there are differences between Latinas and white women," said Stern, who is an associate professor in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California. "To our knowledge, this is the first study that has looked at meat intake among Latinas."
In the study, the researchers examined the eating habits of 7,470 women. The participants, who were between the ages of 25 and 79, were enrolled in two other studies that had collected information on their dietary habits. The women resided in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and the San Francisco Bay area.
In the first study, the researchers used a questionnaire that covered more than 300 food items. The questionnaire in the other study covered 85 food items. Bilingual interviewers were used when needed.
After specifically looking at processed meat intake, the researchers found that Latinas who ate around 20 grams of processed meat on a daily basis were 42 percent more likely than white women who ate the same amount of processed meat to have breast cancer.
"We're not entirely sure why processed meat association was restricted to Hispanics, especially since we know processed meats are carcinogens," said lead author Andre Kim, a molecular epidemiology doctoral student at USC.
The team also found that white women who ate an average of 14 grams of tuna per day had a 25 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer. The association between tuna consumption and breast cancer risk was also seen in Latinas, but the link was not as statistically significant.
Stern and Kim plan on examining larger data sets to see if they find a similar association between consumption of processed meats and breast cancer risk specifically in Latinas.
The study's findings were published in the journal Cancer Causes Control.
